Tuesdata: What the viewing numbers are telling us after a month of Total TV data
Welcome to Tuesdata, our weekly data-led analysis for Unmade’s paying members.
Below, we explore the data from the first month of the rebooted TV ratings system VOZ, and what the Total TV numbers tell us about viewership patterns. There’s also an update on the Unmade Index, including The Market Herald’s recovery from last week’s mysterious price plunge.
Everyone else hits the paywall a bit further down. We today kick off our end of financial year offer for you to become an Unmade member with a 45% saving. Instead of our full price of $650, you can subscribe for just $358. That discount will apply for as long as you maintain your membership.
Unmade members get all of our Tuesdata posts along with access to our full publishing archive, which goes behind the paywall after two months.
They also got discounted tickets to our events, including humAIn, our conference focusing on the impact of AI on media and marketing. The coupon code to access the discount appears at the end of this post below the paywall
How Farmer Wants A Wife and Alone won the first month of Total TV’s BVOD battle
Seja Al Zaidi writes:
The Australian TV industry’s long-awaited Total TV data – taking in both broadcast and streaming viewing numbers – finally launched at the start of May.
For the first time, the industry gets a next day snapshot of viewing behaviour on all platforms, followed by a further combined update seven days on.
The launch could not come soon enough, with traditional viewing numbers in rapid decline, exacerbated since the end of lockdowns. But is BVOD – broadcast viewing on demand – making up the shortfall as well as the networks claim?
Unmade has been exploring the numbers available so far to highlight the winners under the new system which is delivered by OzTam’s VOZ (Virtual Australia) audience system.
We’ll start with Total TV viewing – taking in metro and regional broadcast viewing combined with BVOD after seven days.
Seven News takes the crown
In truth, the BVOD numbers (shown in yellow) don’t make much difference to a big show’s overall audience, which is still driven by metro broadcast viewers (shown in green) and regional broadcast viewers (in red).
The table above is based on Unmade combining the weekly top 20 shows data published by VOZ covering the first three weeks of May.
News programs dominated.
An episode of Seven News Sunday came out on top, with a Total People number of 1.579m on May 21. That included metro viewing of 993,000 and regional viewing of 551,000. BVOD accounted for just 35,000.
In total, Seven News made it into ten of the first 20 places. This was helped by Seven coding the 6pm and 6.30pm halves of the program as seperate shows. And it’s worth noting that viewers were watching different Seven News content with different presenters in each market.
The top program which actually had the same content in all markets was Seven’s reality show Farmer Wants A Wife, which was ninth biggest, with a total audience of 1.376m. This was also almost the only program in the top 20 to deliver a decent showing on BVOD – with 205,000 viewers.
The only other show to perform similarly in the top 20 was Ten’s Masterchef which saw 182,000 of of its 1.3m viewers come from BVOD.
Three of the coronation programs across the networks also featured in the top 20 for the month.
Where BVOD begins to make slightly more impact felt is in the key advertising demographic of 25-54.
Compared to overall Total TV numbers, there was significantly more BVOD viewing (and significantly less regional) in the 25-54 segment.
Masterchef was top show for 25-54, with its BVOD viewers (116,000) almost equal to regional viewers (120,000).
Nine’s Lego Masters was not far behind.
Where the numbers become even more fascinating is in an analysis of BVOD numbers on their own. In both overall BVOD viewing and 25-54, SBS’s survival reality show Alone Australia was a sleeper hit.
The first episode of Alone delivered 278,000 BVOD viewers. That was far bigger than its regional broadcast viewership of 220,000 and not far behind its metro broadcast number of 377,000. A full 32% of the show’s viewers came via BVOD.
All of the other strong BVOD performers were in the reality or entertainment genres, including Farmer Wants A Wife, Masterchef, Travel Guides and Home & Away.
Alone Australia dominates the 25-54s
Just like it did in national BVOD figures, Alone took the prize for top program that 25-54’s latched upon.
Three different episodes of Alone scored the highest in BVOD viewing for 25-54’s.
Time shifted viewing over the next 28 days isn’t included in the overnight total TV data, meaning the numbers could be higher than represented in these graphs.
It will take a few more weeks of data to get a fuller picture of viewing performance. One early indication is that marketers looking to build long tail reach should be starting to consider BVOD as part of the solution. Whether that will be enough to make up for the decline in broadcast viewing remains to be seen.
Unmade Index sees a modest rise but lags wider market
The Unmade Index followed world markets upwards yesterday after the US edged closer to a resolution of its debt crisis.
The index, which measures the performance of ASX-listed media and marketing stocks, landed at 627.9 points yesterday, up by 0.22%. This was somewhat behidn the wider ASX All Ordinaries which was up by 0.8%.
The three biggest stocks on the index – Nine, Domain and Ooh Media – all slipped backwards (by 0.26%, 0.87% and 1.21%), while the mid tier stocks were all in positive territory.
The Market Herald – currently the subject of a shareholder war and regulatory investigations saw its share price return to 34c, exactly where it had sat on Thursday before plunging to 27c on Friday.
Another market minnow, outdoor advertising player Motio, rose by 20.69%.
That’s all for today. Thank you for subscribing.
We’ll be back with more later in the week.
Your coupon code for humAIn
Unmade members get $135 off tickets for humAIn – human creativity X AI
Your humAIn coupon code is:
Unmade_Member
Go to humain.au and enter the coupon code to access your discounted tickets
